Instituto de Bioquímica Vegetal y Fotosíntesis, CSIC and Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain.
Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
FEMS Microbiol Rev. 2016 Nov 1;40(6):831-854. doi: 10.1093/femsre/fuw029.
Cyanobacteria carry out oxygenic photosynthesis, play a key role in the cycling of carbon and nitrogen in the biosphere, and have had a large impact on the evolution of life and the Earth itself. Many cyanobacterial strains exhibit a multicellular lifestyle, growing as filaments that can be hundreds of cells long and endowed with intercellular communication. Furthermore, under depletion of combined nitrogen, filament growth requires the activity of two interdependent cell types: vegetative cells that fix CO2 and heterocysts that fix N2. Intercellular molecular transfer is essential for signaling involved in the regulation of heterocyst differentiation and for reciprocal nutrition of heterocysts and vegetative cells. Here we review various aspects of multicellularity in cyanobacterial filaments and their differentiation, including filament architecture with emphasis on the structures used for intercellular communication; we survey theoretical models that have been put forward to understand heterocyst patterning and discuss the factors that need to be considered for these models to reflect the biological entity; and finally, since cell division in filamentous cyanobacteria has the peculiarity of producing linked instead of independent cells, we review distinct aspects of cell division in these organisms.
蓝藻进行产氧光合作用，在生物圈的碳氮循环中起着关键作用，对生命和地球本身的进化产生了巨大影响。许多蓝藻菌株表现出多细胞的生活方式，生长为可以长达数百个细胞的丝状，并且具有细胞间通讯。此外，在联合氮耗尽的情况下，丝状生长需要两种相互依存的细胞类型的活性：固定 CO2 的营养细胞和固定 N2 的异形胞。细胞间分子转移对于涉及异形胞分化调节的信号转导以及异形胞和营养细胞的相互营养是必不可少的。在这里，我们回顾了蓝藻丝状体内细胞多态性及其分化的各个方面，包括强调细胞间通讯结构的丝状结构；我们调查了已经提出的用于理解异形胞模式形成的理论模型，并讨论了这些模型需要考虑的因素，以反映生物实体；最后，由于丝状蓝藻的细胞分裂具有产生连接而不是独立细胞的特殊性，我们回顾了这些生物体中细胞分裂的不同方面。
